Rashomon and Seventeen Other Stories (9 page)

Now no one will laugh at me anymore
, the Naigu whispered silently in his heart, letting his long nose sway in the dawn's autumn wind.

Well, anyway, one night E'in slipped out of the temple alone—without his usual band of disciples. He stepped across the road to Sarusawa Pond, and there, on the embankment by the Court Maiden's Willow, he erected a signboard proclaiming in bold calligraphy, “On the third day of the third month, the dragon of this pond will ascend to heaven.” In fact, E'in had no idea whether a dragon even lived in Sarusawa Pond, and his announcement that it would ascend to heaven on the third day of the third month was a total fabrication. He might have been safer to announce that it would
not
ascend to heaven. Why, then, would he even bother pulling such a prank? The answer is that the people of Nara—his priestly brothers and laity alike—had upset E'in with their constant jokes about his nose.
He was determined to put one over on them and have a good laugh at their expense. This probably sounds ridiculous to you, but it happened a long time ago, and back in those days there were pranksters like this everywhere.

So anyway, the first one to notice the signboard was an old lady who came every morning to worship the K
ō
fukuji's Buddha. She was holding her prayer beads and trudging along the bank of the pond, leaning on her bamboo stick, when out of the morning mist, beneath the Court Maiden's Willow, emerged a sign that she had not seen the day before. This was a very strange place to put up a sign announcing a service at the temple, she thought, and besides, she didn't know how to read, so she was going to pass on by when, as luck would have it, a monk happened along from the opposite direction and she asked him to tell her what it said.

“On the third day of the third month, the dragon of this pond will ascend to heaven,” he read.

This would have come as a surprise to anyone, of course, but the stooped old woman was so stunned she straightened right up and asked the monk, “Could there be a dragon in this pond?”

He, on the other hand, with complete equanimity delivered her a lecture on the spot: “Long ago, in distant Cathay, there was a scholar who had a swelling that formed over one eyebrow. It itched so badly he couldn't stand it. Then suddenly one day the heavens grew overcast and with a clap of thunder the clouds released torrents of rain. No sooner did the scholar see the downpour than his lump burst open and from it a black dragon rose straight up to heaven in a swirl of clouds—or so the story goes. If a dragon could live in a face lump, how much more likely that dozens of dragons or poisonous snakes could be slithering around in a big pond like this just waiting for a chance to soar up to the sky.”

Long convinced that a priest would never tell a lie, the old woman could hardly fail to be shocked at his story. “Now that you mention it, the color of the water over there looks a little strange to me,” she said, and though it was still far from the third day of the third month, she left the priest and rushed off,
panting the holy name of Amida,
¹
too impatient to bother leaning on her bamboo stick. If no one else had been looking, the priest would have doubled over with laughter. Because yes, it was he, the one who had started it all, Master of the Profound Dialogue, E'in—nickname, Storenose—out walking around the pond just to see if any unsuspecting pigeons would be taken in by the signboard he had put up the night before. And no sooner had the old woman run off than he saw someone else reading the sign—a woman with a servant carrying her baggage (probably a traveler getting an early start). She was peering up from under her round straw hat through the veil hanging around the brim. So then E'in, trying hard as he could not to laugh, walked up to the signboard and pretended to read it. He snorted in feigned amazement with that big red nose of his, and then he strolled back to the K
ō
fukuji.

At the Great South Gate, E'in ran into Emon, a priest who lived in the same cell. For eyebrows, this Emon had two curmudgeonly caterpillars, which he screwed up on seeing E'in, and said, “Well, my brother monk is up unusually early, I see. I suppose it means the weather's going to change.”

Seizing his chance, E'in gave him a triumphant, big-nosed grin and said, “The weather's not all that's going to change, I hear. Did you know a dragon's supposed to ascend to heaven from Sarusawa Pond on the third day of the third month?”

Emon glared at him suspiciously, but then he sniffed and said with a mocking smile, “Sounds as if my brother monk has had a pleasant dream. They say a dream about a dragon ascending to heaven is a good omen.”

Holding high his bowl-shaped, flat-topped head, he started past E'in, but then he seemed to hear E'in muttering to himself, “…no salvation for sentient beings without ties to the Buddha…”

Emon dug his hemp-thonged clog into the earth and spun around angrily as if challenging E'in to a doctrinal debate: “I don't suppose you've got any proof about that dragon…?”

With a deliberately casual wave in the direction of the pond, which was now beginning to glitter in the rays of the morning sun, E'in said dismissively, “If you doubt your brother monk,
I suggest you have a look at the signboard at the Court Maiden's Willow.”

This seemed to put at least a crack in the lance of even the stubborn Emon, who squinted and blinked once. “Oh? There's a signboard?” he said feebly and started walking again. This time, instead of holding his head high, he tipped it to one side as if emptying the bowl, a sure sign that E'in had given him something to think about. You can well imagine how amused the Former Keeper of the Storehouse-nose was as he watched Emon walking away. E'in's red nose got a ticklish feeling inside, and even as he solemnly climbed the stone steps of the Great South Gate, he couldn't help exploding with laughter.

The public notice that “On the third day of the third month, the dragon of this pond will ascend to heaven” began working its effect so well on the very first morning that within a day or two people everywhere in Nara were talking about the dragon of Sarusawa Pond. To be sure, there were those who asserted that the signboard was only a prank, but word happened to circulate just then about a dragon ascending from the Shinsen'en Imperial Garden in Kyoto, so even the skeptics began to half-believe and wonder if there were at least
some
possibility that such an awe-inspiring event might occur.

Ten days later, much to everyone's surprise, a truly mysterious event did occur in Nara. The only daughter of a Shint
ō
priest at the Kasuga Shrine—nearly nine years old—was half-dozing on her mother's knee one night when a black dragon came down like a cloud from the sky and spoke to her in human words: “I will soon be ascending to heaven on the third day of the third month, but rest assured I will cause you townspeople no hardship.” She woke up and told her mother every detail, and before you knew it everyone in town was talking about how the dragon from Sarusawa Pond had made a dream visitation.

So then the story really started to grow a tail and fins: the dragon took possession of a child from over here and made him write a poem, the dragon appeared to a shrine maiden over there and gave her a divine revelation. There was such a fuss that you expected the dragon of Sarusawa Pond to stick his head up out of the water any minute. One man even swore he
saw the dragon with his own two eyes: maybe not the head sticking up, but it was the real thing, he was sure. This was an old man who came to the market every morning to sell river fish. That particular morning, when he got to Sarusawa Pond, it was still dark, but right near where the branches of the Court Maiden's Willow hung down, below the bank where the signboard stood, he could see that one patch in the predawn water had a faint glow. Of course, this was just when they were making all the fuss about the dragon, so his first thought was that this must be a visitation by the Dragon God himself. He started shaking all over—either out of joy or fear—set down his pack of river fish, tiptoed over to the bank, and, hanging onto the willow branches, peered down into the water. There, at the bottom of the glowing area, some kind of weird, eerie thing was sitting stock still, coiled up like an iron chain—but the sudden sound of a human being may have frightened it: it started slithering and uncoiling itself, and as it moved away he watched the trail it stirred up on the surface of the pond until the eerie thing simply vanished somewhere. Sweating now from head to toe, the old man came back to where he had left his pack, but his merchandise—twenty carp and crucian—was gone! “Some crafty old otter probably tricked him,” said those who laughed at the old man, but a surprisingly large number of people agreed with this assessment: “No otter could be living in that pond where His Majesty the Drag on King deigns to rule in peace. It must be that His Majesty took pity on the fish and to save their lives he summoned them down to where He Himself resides.”

Meanwhile, the more people talked about the proclamation that “On the third day of the third month, the dragon of this pond will ascend to heaven,” the more the Reverend Storenose E'in smiled to himself and twitched that big nose of his in exultation. But then, with only four or five days to go until the third day of the third month, he was shocked by the sudden arrival of his aunt, a nun from Sakurai in Settsu Province, who had made the long trip to see the ascent of the dragon. E'in felt terrible about this, and he did everything he could—threatening, cajoling—to make her go back to Sakurai, but his aunt refused to budge.

“I've lived this long,” she said, “and if I can do reverence just once at the sight of His Majesty the Dragon King, I can die happy.”

In the face of such determined resistance, it was impossible for E'in to confess that he had erected the signboard as a joke. He could only give in and promise not only to see to his aunt's needs until the third day of the third month, but also to escort her on the big day to witness the Dragon God's ascent. Now that he thought about it, if news of the dragon had reached his aunt the nun, then the rumor must have spread not only to the immediate Yamato area and to Settsu, but to Izumi and Kawachi, and maybe even as far as Harima, Yamashiro,
Ō
mi, and Tamba. The trick he had hoped to play on the people of Nara had ended up fooling tens of thousands of others in the surrounding provinces. He found the thought more frightening than amusing, and the whole time he was showing his aunt the nun around the many temples of Nara from morning to night, he was feeling as guilty as a criminal hiding out from the police. On the other hand, when he heard people on the street saying that flowers and incense were being offered up before the signboard, it not only made him feel strange, it gave him a delicious sense of having accomplished something really big.

The remaining days passed quickly enough, and the third day of the third month arrived, when the dragon was supposed to ascend to heaven. E'in now had no choice but to keep his promise and reluctantly to accompany his aunt the nun to the top of the stone steps of the K
ō
fukuji's Great South Gate, where they had a panoramic view of Sarusawa Pond. The sky was perfectly clear that day, and it seemed as though there wouldn't be enough of a breeze even to sound the gate's wind chime. The eager spectators poured in—from the town of Nara, of course, but in such numbers that they must also have come from the provinces of Kawachi, Izumi, Settsu, Harima, Yamashiro,
ō
mi, and Tamba as well. From his vantage point on the stone steps, E'in took in a sea of people that stretched east and west as far as the eye could see, a milling throng of black caps of all shapes and sizes that filled Nara's main thoroughfare to its far, far end, where it dissolved in the mist. Here and there, the sea of
black was parted by an aristocrat's ox-drawn carriage pushing its way through, its high canopy done in stylish green or red with a white sandalwood visor, the gold and silver fittings mercilessly reflecting the springtime sun into the eyes of the crowd. Some spectators thrust parasols aloft, others strung up cloth canopies, and some even went so far as to set up a row of viewing stands in the middle of the road. From high above, the scene around the pond was enough to make you think that one of the great annual Kyoto processions—the Hollyhock Festival, say—was about to pass by out of season.
²
Never in his wildest dreams had the Reverend E'in imagined that putting up a simple signboard would provoke such a commotion as he saw before him now. Overwhelmed by it all, he could only turn to his aunt the nun and bleat pitifully, “I can't believe this crowd!” He didn't even seem to have the energy today for one of his big-nosed snorts. Instead, he sank down in a pathetic crouch below a pillar of the Great South Gate.

His aunt the nun had no idea what was going on inside E'in, of course. She stretched so hard to see everything around her that she almost lost her hood, and she pelted him with a steady stream of comments: “You can see there's something special about this pond: after all, it's where the Dragon God lives,” she said. Or: “I'm sure the Dragon God will reveal himself today: just
look
at all these people!” E'in could hardly go on squatting at the base of the pillar. He dragged himself up to find a mountain of soft caps and angular samurai hats around him, but in their midst the Reverend Emon was holding his bowl-shaped head aloft as usual, his eyes locked on the pond. E'in immediately forgot his qualms, tickled to think that he had succeeded in hoodwinking this particular man.

“Brother monk!” he called out to him playfully, “Are
you
here too to watch the dragon ascend to heaven?”

Emon tossed him a contemptuous glance and, without moving his bushy caterpillar eyebrows, said with a surprisingly serious look on his face, “Yes indeed. And I'm finding this wait just as long as you are.”

E'in thought he might have been a bit too hard on his fellow priest, which put an end to his jovial remarks. Reverting to his
earlier anxious expression, he let his gaze drift over the sea of humans and down to Sarusawa Pond. On its softly glowing, now warmer-looking surface, however, the pond just went on reflecting the still, vivid images of the cherry trees and willows on the surrounding embankment. It gave absolutely no sign that it was ever going to send a dragon aloft. And today especially, rimmed as it was for miles around by an unbroken carpet of spectators, the pond looked a size smaller than usual. The very idea that there could be a dragon in it seemed like a bald-faced lie.